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I've been thinking about RPGs a lot recently, how they could be improved and how they should be changed. The thing is that once you have been playing them for a few years it starts to become a bit hard to think "out of the box". That's where you come in. I want your help to cover all of the RPG clichés and produce them into a list.

An example of a definite cliché is the medieval setting that the majority of RPGs seem to have.

There's always a Sucka Emcee who raps like old Sugarhill Gang style and his rhymes don't connect and he talks trash about the hero. But when you go to install a dent in his forehead, the law gonna try to tell you that you're the bad guy here.

Falling Rule
An RPG character can fall any distance onto anything without suffering anything worse than brief unconsciousness. In fact, falling a huge distance is an excellent cure for otherwise fatal wounds -- anyone who you see shot, stabbed, or mangled and then tossed off a cliff is guaranteed to return later in the game with barely a scratch.http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

Falling Rule
An RPG character can fall any distance onto anything without suffering anything worse than brief unconsciousness. In fact, falling a huge distance is an excellent cure for otherwise fatal wounds -- anyone who you see shot, stabbed, or mangled and then tossed off a cliff is guaranteed to return later in the game with barely a scratch.http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

Falling Rule
An RPG character can fall any distance onto anything without suffering anything worse than brief unconsciousness. In fact, falling a huge distance is an excellent cure for otherwise fatal wounds -- anyone who you see shot, stabbed, or mangled and then tossed off a cliff is guaranteed to return later in the game with barely a scratch.http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

RPG World is a must-read if you're talking "conventions of the RPG genre". It deals with (makes fun of) all the clichés of RPG games, from the character stereotypes to battle conventions to predictable storyline to cutscenes and scripted battles. Funny.

You are a master (delete as appropriate) ninja/monk/swordsman/mage.
Quite literally right outside your place of training (or even in the basement) there are monsters, whose entire reason for existence is to kill you or die trying, which if you can manage to kill 40 or so (which would take about 2 hours at most) of those you become far stronger.

Why then under the training of another master (delete as appropriate) ninja/monk/swordsman/mage did you not do this during the years it took to get to the point you are at?

At some point there will be another planet, undiscovered underworld, parallel universe or similar. You will first arrive here by accident and find out that you need to traverse between the "real" world and this one in order to accomplish your goal. The bad guys probably want to try to take control of this alternate world for some nefarious goals, probably to enslave the population of said alternate world.